Quick answer: LinkedIn shows an email address only when someone has chosen to share it with their connections. For everyone else you can find a business email from the company website or an email lookup, but you should verify it before you send, because guessing and sending is how a sender reputation gets damaged.
1. Check the Contact info section (connections only)
On a profile, the Contact info box lists an email when the person has chosen to share it, and generally only with first-degree connections. So the simplest route is also the slowest: connect first, then look. If they accepted your request, check again. If there is no email there, they have not chosen to share one.
2. Look at the company website
Small and mid-size companies often list a contact address or a team page. A shared address such as a general inbox is less likely to reach the person, but it can still get a message to the right desk. If the website shows how addresses are formed (for example a press contact written as first.last), note the pattern, but treat it as a hypothesis, not a fact.
3. Use an email lookup, then check the result
An email lookup service takes a name and a company domain and returns the most likely address with a confidence level. That is better than guessing, but it is still a prediction. The step that matters is the next one.
4. Verify before you send
Verification checks whether an address is likely to accept mail without sending to it. It catches mistyped domains, addresses that no longer exist and catch-all domains that accept anything. Skipping this step is what produces bounces.
A common guideline is to keep the share of emails that hard bounce under about 2 percent. Past that, mailbox providers start to treat your domain as careless, and legitimate messages begin to land in spam. If you cannot verify an address, it is usually better not to email it and use LinkedIn instead.
5. Ask on the channel you already have
If you are connected, a short message works: "What is the best address to send you a note about this?" Many people answer, and the answer is a verified address in the format they prefer. For people you have not connected with, a good connection note gets you to this step.
What not to do
- Do not guess and send. Trying first.last, firstlast and flast in a row is three chances to bounce.
- Do not buy a giant list and mail it cold. Quality beats volume, and it is easy to include addresses of people who never agreed to be contacted.
- Do not skip the unsubscribe line and your postal address. Rules differ by country, but identifying yourself and giving a clear way to opt out are close to universal.
A note on the rules
Cold email to business addresses is treated differently in different places. In the United States the main rules cover honest subject lines, clear identification, a postal address and a working opt-out. In the EU and UK the rules vary by recipient type and local law. This is general information, not legal advice, so check the rules where your recipients live.
Where this fits in an outreach sequence
Email works best alongside LinkedIn, not instead of it. A common pattern is a connection request first, then a message, and an email only to people for whom you have a verified address. If a prospect has no findable email, the LinkedIn steps still run and the email step is simply skipped. That is how FollowArc handles it: when a campaign includes an email step and no verified address can be found, the email step is skipped rather than guessed.
For the rest of the sequence, see how to build a LinkedIn outreach sequence, LinkedIn vs email outreach and the free LinkedIn outreach playbook.